before him eight days after the Ascension. CHAP I do tremble to remember the end of all these high and new enterprises. For oftentimes it hath been A.D. 1523 seen that to a new enterprise, there followeth a new manner and strange sequel. God of His mercy send His grace unto such fashion, that it may be for the best."2 Many others, no doubt, both among the clergy Wolsey beand the laity, trembled to think of the reforms which fore his age Wolsey wished to effect: and the experience of later ages teaches us that those who look on "trembling," can most effectively hinder the progress of those who are prepared to advance. Men before their age, such as Wolsey, are generally confident as to "the end" of their high and "new enterprises," but they find it difficult to carry them out in their completeness when standing almost alone in their courageous onslaught upon the established order of things: and stolid resistance to a really great reformer may end in the "new manner and strange sequel" of an uprooting revolution instead of a wholesome reformation. The destruction of official records has left us in the dark as to the actual transactions of Wolsey's legatine synods for the reformation of the Church, but the above letter affords us a slight glimpse of the difficulties which he had to encounter, difficulties too great to be surmounted by constitutional methods, and only to be mowed down by the supreme tyranny of the Tudor sceptre, wielded by the hands of the less scrupulous Cromwell and the King himself. didate for Wolsey had longing visions of the great work that Is a canmight be effected if he could become pope: and it the Papal can scarcely be doubted that an English Pope, chair 2 Eccl. Mem., i. 77; and Brewer's Calend. St. Pap., iii. 3024. CHAP trained as Wolsey had been to English modes of II thought and habits of government, might, at any A.D. 1527 time during the last 400 years, have changed the face of Christendom. But England has ever been carefully excluded from the papal throne, and even Wolsey could not command quite influence enough to ensure his election, though he was a candidate on two occasions, and was supported by the Emperor, the French king, and Henry VIII. Towards the close 3 of his career, in 1527, he occupied for a short time Becomes the post of vicar-general to the Pope, and was emGeneral to powered to exercise the papal authority to its full the Pope extent in England, while Clement VII. was im Vicar prisoned by Charles V. But the transactions connected with the divorce show that this authority was more verbal than real, and perhaps the only important result of the appointment was that referred to by Lord Herbert: it showed the King that it was possible to carry on the ecclesiastical government of England without the intervention of the Pope. A far more important movement was initiated at this time, which would have had a vast influence upon the course of the Reformation had it ever been 3 In a letter dated March 14, 1519, Sir Thomas Boleyn writes from the Court of France that Francis "promised, on the word of a king, that if Wolsey aspired to be head of the Church, he would secure him on the first opportunity the voices of fourteen cardinals, the whole company of the Ursyns at Rome, and the help of one Mark Antony di Colonna, whom he calls a valiant man, and of great reputation there." [Brewer's Calend. St. Pap., iii. 122.] Boleyn writes doubtingly as to Wolsey's acceptance of the offer, and there is not, indeed, on record, a single line of the Cardinal's to show that he would willingly have left England for Rome, or that he felt any regret at his non-election. He would rather "continue in the King's service," he said on one occasion, "than be ten popes," only he knew how much the King wished that he should be at the head of the Church. [Brewer's Calend. St. Pap., iii. 3372, 3377, 3609.] So singularly has this great man been misrepresented in popu lar histories. 4 Eccl. Mem., i. 107. 5 Life of Henry VIII., p. 209. II Council of carried out. Wolsey himself, in a letter to the King, CHAP written in 1527, had glanced at the possibility of a separation of the Churches of England and France A.D. 1527 from the Pope, suggesting that a continuance of Roman policy would end in this, that "the Churches of England and France, to his perpetual rebuke and ignominy, should decline from the obedience of the Pope." The two Kings, Henry and Francis, had Holds a also agreed to a convocation of all the Cardinals then Cardinals at liberty to meet Wolsey in France and consult in France about the condition of the Church, and the imprisonment of Clement: and the French King received him with so much honour that, in July, Francis actually sent him a commission to pardon and set at liberty all prisoners on his journey through France to Paris. It was a noble feature in the Cardinal's character that he could then write to Henry, "for your sake, here, and in my receiving into this town, there hath been showed me the greatest honour that they could devise."9 The French King was, in fact, treating Wolsey as his equal, and telling him that he should look upon him as his chief adviser, as he was that of Henry.1 The great and honoured statesman wished to make this council of Cardinals a final court of appeal in the matter of the divorce: and he also proposed to them that they should administer the affairs of the Church during the Pope's captivity. But they refused to Is thwartco-operate with him, fearing with true Italian ed by jeal. jealousy that the papal throne might be again trans- Italian ferred to Avignon.' Then Francis began to open 6 State Papers, i. 274. 7 Ibid., 230. 8 Rymer, xiv. 202. State Papers, i. 223. ousy of cardinals II CHAP negotiations with Henry for separating the Churches of England and France altogether from the papal A union jurisdiction, and establishing them as a great western churches patriarchate under Wolsey. The escape of the Pope of France probably put an end to the negotiation. of the and England pro posed Wolsey's falling 3 And now the miserable complications arising out of the divorce question were fast bringing to an end influence Wolsey's power and prosperity, and swallowing up all other questions, even including that of Church Reform, for several years. His private influence with the King had begun to diminish in 1525, when misunderstandings had arisen respecting several matters of patronage. A similar misunderstanding occurred in 1528, but Anne Boleyn was soon afterwards, if not at that time, established as the King's mistress, and as soon as she found reason to suspect Wolsey was disinclined to her marriage with Henry, she speedily brought about his ruin. The last mark that Wolsey left on the Reformation was nevertheless Proposes a conspicuous one. He applied in the King's name an increase for papal bulls authorizing the dissolution of a number rics of monasteries for the purpose of founding Episcopal of bishop A.D. 1528 sees, of endowing King's College, Cambridge (the lands left for which, Henry had appropriated for himself), and for adding to the College at Windsor.* A memorandum in the King's handwriting is still in existence, in which twenty-one new bishoprics are designated. Of these, only six were ever erected. Comparing the original design for Christ Church with its minimized execution, it is reasonable to sup 3 Ellis' Orig. Letters, III. ii. 98. There were semi-official overtures for the union of the French Church with the English in October 1546. See a letter from Dr. Wotton to Secretary Paget in State Papers, xi. 323. 4 That is the Chapel Royal. Rymer, xiv. 270, 273. 5 Eccl. Mem., ii. 406. II pose that the twenty-one projected bishoprics also CHAP represent Wolsey's plan, the six established ones Henry's execution of it when in the hands of Crom- A.D. 1529 well and Cranmer. 6 It might seem that we should here part with the great Cardinal, since we have come to the end of his plans as they looked to the Reformation of the Church of England. But though this is not the place in which to write his life, the history of his work would hardly be complete without some account of its break-down. the King's against The first indication that Henry's confidence in his Early minister was diminishing, is given by a letter of the causes of latter written on February 2, 1525, in which he displeasure deprecates the king's anger in respect to two transac- Wolsey tions, about which he had expressed strong displeasure through Sir Thomas More. The first was associated with some municipal privileges which Wolsey had claimed for the monastery of St. Albans, and he justifies himself by precedent, on apparently very good and honourable grounds. The other was "some misorder supposed to be used by Dr. Allen and other my officers," in suppressing some poverty-struck monasteries for the purpose of annexation of their estates to "your intended college at Oxford." It is pro 6 Two Bulls of Clement VII. for suppressing monasteries and erecting cathedrals were issued to Wolsey in the years 1528 and 1529. [Wilkins' Concil., iii. 715; Rymer, xiv. 273, 291.] In the latter year, Convocation had been consulted about projected reformations of the Church [Wilkins' Concil., iii. 717], and a provincial synod had been held for the same purpose, at which some important constitutions were passed. [Ibid, iii. 717-724.] The 7 So the Cardinal used to date |